Influences of People’s Psychology by Light in Architecture

Introduction

Light is the wavelength of electronic radiation that the human eye can detect. Whether artificial lighting or daylighting, it brought attention to colors, texture, and space form, and the real purpose of architecture is to achieve with the aids of light (Petrescu, & Calautit, 13.3). Vision contributes mainly to behavior or psychology, and lightening building makes human beings perceive architecture more (Kalat 23). A good building design takes into consideration light factors. Architecture psychology is mostly control by how the building looks in terms of brightness and colors, considering that it is crucial to understand how light in architecture influences people′s emotions.

1. Precedent studies

Schielke states that Louis Khan uses the light as a source often hidden behind louvers or secondary walls, thus concentrating attention on the light's effect and not on its origin. That’s what we are trying to figure out, how to use light to draw people’s attention and motivate them to move to the next space. Light drives the minds of people; however, only a few appreciate this sense. According to psychological facts, apart from the visual effects attributed to image, shape, perception, and contrast, light has biological and psychological effects, whose impacts are transferrable to the health and well-being of people living in these spaces (Tomassoni et al. 1216). The light in space's cognitive performance and the potential of light architectural designs need to ensure adequate brightness, hue, and saturation as the significant qualities of light related to color. Understanding issues revolving around environmental cognition can help determine the architectural design, evaluating building elements, paintings, textures, and spaces capable of drawing people’s attention.

 In this context, the success of this project is linked to the existing knowledge in lighting psychology. This explains why some living spaces might feel warm and inviting while others are too cold and sometimes oppressive. For this reason, the design takes into consideration the places where the lighting should be placed in the room, making a good impression of the living space. The concern is due to light's potentials to provoke or invoke emotions; therefore, there is a need to position light strategically to avoid negative emotions (Chao et al. 175). Additionally, brightness, which is known to impact space perception, needs to be considered. Other aspects stated earlier, such as hue or color in light saturation, affects moods.

2. Relation to Site and Program

Our location is East 38th-42nd Street in New York City. We selected this location because it is adjacent to the United Nations and is surrounded by tall buildings, restricting the amount of light we will use while constructing the building. It is also convenient in terms of travel since it is surrounded by FDR Drive, bus stations, the Queens Midtown Tunnel, and adjacent to Grand Central Terminal and the East 34th Street Ferry Terminal. It would be easy for people to get here. And it was right next to the bridge, so people on the other side of the river could see the rally.

The lights will classify all of the rooms, which will be our theme: light design spaces. As a result, we conducted a sun analysis for our blog. We observed the sunshine on June 21st and December 21st and noticed two moments that helped us construct the house. The shadow of three tall buildings is perpendicular to our position on June 21st at 6:00 pm, dividing the location into five parts, and sunlight passes through to the site on December 21st at 2:00 pm, dividing the area into three-part (Mansfield 85).

The UN Events in NYC Gallery, meeting center, Meditation room, Auditorium (an internal gathering space for protests), Public Plaza (an outdoor gathering space for demonstrations), cafe, office, and parking are all available class. It divided the main program gallery into five sections focused on the UN's five roles: maintaining peace international and stability, human rights protection, humanitarian delivering relief, sustainable development promotion, and international law upholding.

3. Design Methodology

The interior light will be manipulated in order to research how light can affect an individual's emotions. Interior manipulations there will be subjected to three designs that are light therapy, blue light, and control light with each condition of lightening, using Profile of Mood State-Short Form (POMS-SF) for emotional state assessment. There are five subscales in POMS-SF: Tension, Anger, Confusion, Vigor, Depression-Dejection, and Figure. The mood will be found by summing subscales score and deducting the vigor score. The POMS-SF will be accompanied by a questionnaire for individuals who have undertaken the scale tests, which will widen the score of understanding the psychological effects of light in architecture. In this case, direct sunlight will not be used. Instead, the ceiling will be removed and replaced by material that will manipulate the stage, giving different light colors.

When the rays of light illuminate the middle of the stage in the morning hours around 8:00 am, all locations will be illuminated by the afternoon. Making most people focus on the scene, which is when a different ceiling can be used to change the color of light that is being enlightened on the stage. Around 2:00 pm, bouncing light is soft and sufficient, direct sunlight is on the gallery, guiding people to move forward. Which will have the same illumination till around 5:00 pm. light can be analyzed as guiding individuals to move away from sunlight or focus where light rays are appearing. 

4. Methodology Precedent Research

We learn to manipulate interior lighting to observe individuals' emotions and responses due to change in architecture. Architectural change should start with the lighting, but why lighting? This goes without debate as to most of the information we receive in the world that surrounds us through the eyes. The possibility to receive this information is precedent by light as the only medium that our eyes can see. However, its concentration, which is referred to as intensity, distribution, and other properties of light, is the reason behind the perception (Tomassoni et al., 1216). In the planning of the visual environment, priority should be given to the lighting design. An efficient lighting design should therefore create a perceptual condition that allows every individual to work effectively and maintain a safe orientation. These two conditions promote a feeling of well-being in the living space.

We what to learn how to determine the extent to which different light colors in architecture buildings can invoke individual emotions. Maybe we could create a feeling of revere when people see what the UN has done in New York. The design in this project had a primary focus to create a positive social space. In this effort, the project had to integrate specific criteria before the planning process. This criterion should focus on self-esteem, normality, autonomy control, and motivation, which creates new forms of buildings, with new urban structures enriched with new functions and still well lit. The effort to achieve new designs should be accompanied by change, where people drop the old concepts and employ creativity to create spaces that promote residents' well-being.

5. Theory, history, literature, and/or other cultural material

The existence or lack of natural illumination affects behavior patterns by evoking such feelings, which might or might not benefit the task planned for a particular building/architecture (Georgoulis et al., 1935). As a result, architects must interpret performance in terms of the goals for which the building is designed and how natural light will help them accomplish those goals. It's worth remembering that light's psychological effects are dependent on the experiences of the viewers, so it's crucial to think about how people perceive different forms of light when designing architecture. Furthermore, there are significant variations between how natural light is used in formal and informal areas because public spaces represent a larger population. In contrast, private rooms serve a smaller community. While natural daylight sculpts environments, it must conform to the needs of a large number of people in designated areas. Private spaces, which rely more on the Implications for Human Psychology People's reference points are dictated by how they interpret different characteristics in any contextual framework, almost as much as what they see or perceive.

People travel from one location to another, searching for convenience, which would be a significant factor in how interiors are built (Coburn et al., 220). In this situation, comfort refers to illumination and how it contributes to or detracts from space's comfort. For example, certain spatial elements can evoke more visual perception, resulting in a more extended preferred mode. Light can use these variables to describe why people can travel differently in formal and informal areas. People's public places' activities are more exploratory than in private settings like houses, which encourage habitual gestures. As a result, people's actions are influenced by their experience with a structure or, more accurately, space. When researching these traits, bear in mind that people appear to gravitate toward the light and away from darkness. As a result, the dynamic range between the two spaces determines how much focus is required in that place. Since people gravitate toward lighter objects, if the ratio is high, then push into that room would increase.

The light will change when pedestrians walk down the hallway, switching from a private to a public space. Have this feature, and it is necessary to shape the corridor and change the natural light (Garcia et al., 345). As a result, adjustments should be made focusing on an interpretation of the transformation zone associated with human vision adaptation as it moves from light to darkness and vice versa. Individual visions' adjustment influences persons' mobility from one location to the next, commuting through spaces with considerable brightness contrast. Since public buildings are usually lighter than private rooms, it stands to reason that travel between such two environments will have a comparable effect on human perception development. It is essential to note an architectural design such as the Auditorium in a workplace to protect this area and align everything with natural daylight. Despite its high cost, the atrium is a significant leveler and a cost-effective means of supplying natural light and connecting rooms. Thus, people's movement is influenced by their vision adaptation, much as their vision is influenced by their changes from public to private spaces.

Natural illumination influences feelings of comfort and pleasure, but these feelings are given more weight in private spaces such as residences than in public areas such as cities. People would choose illumination that is more realistic and calming as a group, so natural light is preferred to artificial light (Heydarian et al., 1122). Dawn is a gestalt instrument that assists in gestalt restoration by assisting in mental regeneration, conceptual decoding, cognitive decryption, and semantic commodification, among other processes. As a result of its color rendering power and variability, natural light has essential mental and emotional benefits.

Work Cited

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Garcia, Roberto Barraza, et al. "LED street lighting as a strategy for climate change mitigation at local government level." IEEE Global Humanitarian Technology Conference (GHTC 2014). IEEE, 2014.

Georgoulis, Stamatios, et al. "Reflectance and natural illumination from single-material specular objects using deep learning." IEEE transactions on pattern analysis and machine intelligence 40.8 (2017): 1932-1947.

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Kalat, James W. Introduction to psychology. Cengage Learning, 2021.

Mansfield, K. P. "Architectural lighting design: A research review over 50 years." Lighting Research & Technology 50.1 (2018): 80-97.

Petrescu, Florian Ion, and John Kaiser Calautit. "About the light dimensions." American Journal of Applied Sciences 13.3 (2016).

Rasoulpour, Hazhir, and Farzin Charehjoo. "The Effect of the Built Environment on the Human Psyche Promote Relaxation." Architecture Research 7.1 (2017): 16-23.

Schielke, Thomas. "Light Matters: Louis Kahn and the Power of Shadow." Arch Daily 23 (2013).

Tomassoni, Rosella, Giuseppe Galetta, and Eugenia Treglia. "Psychology of light: How light influences the health and psyche." Psychology 6.10 (2015): 1216.